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Grant Williams did it again at last months ASFA national conference, summing up the recent developments of equities and government bond markets, giving an outlook on what’s to come in next couple months and years… Fun to watch as always, even though it’s really nothing but depressing if you thing about it. 30 minutes well spent:

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If you happen to live in the US, somewhere around Washington D.C. – there’s a huge rally planned on Saturday, October 26th 2013:

If you live within 300 miles of DC, please come to the Stop Watching Us Rally Against Mass Surveillance. If we don’t stand up loudly against what the NSA is doing, then we’re responsible for their actions done in our name!

The National Security Agency revealed to an angry congressional panel on Wednesday that its analysis of phone records and online behavior goes exponentially beyond what it had previously disclosed.

John C Inglis, the deputy director of the surveillance agency, told a member of the House judiciary committee that NSA analysts can perform “a second or third hop query” through its collections of telephone data and internet records in order to find connections to terrorist organizations.

“Hops” refers to a technical term indicating connections between people. A three-hop query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with.

To put this into perspective, you might have heard about six degrees of separation – the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

Well, that was in an offline world back in the 1960s. In today’s interconnected world, it’s around 4.7 on Facebook and around 3 to 4 on Twitter. So… with a “terror” watchlist of currently around 700.000 names or so… Go ahead, do the math. How are the chances you aren’t a target? Doesn’t matter if you have nothing to hide and have the most boring life on earth – the US government still cares about every fucking move you make.

Or as a commentator so eloquently put it: If a terrorist suspects real-estate agents daughter’s mechanic fixes your car don’t you think the NSA should have that information?

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On a day when US stocks surge to new highs and Moodys upgrades the US rating outlook from negative to stable… the city of Detroit files for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Don’t worry, it makes perfect sense in the central planned “new normal” the US economy has become.

MOODY’S: U.S. Aaa SUPPORTED BY SECURE STATUS OF U.S. DOLLARS

Just minutes later

BREAKING: US city of Detroit files for bankruptcy: court papers

Following this bombshell, here are a few highlights from Gov. Snyders press conference, summarizing the epic fail Detroit has become:

… difficult to reverse 60 years of decline in which promises were made that did not reflect the reality

Detroit citizens wait an average of 58 minutes for the police to respond to their calls

Only a third of Detroit’s ambulances were in service in the first quarter of 2013

40% of Detroit’s street lights were not functioning

Detroit has large swaths of largely abandoned structures — approximately 78,000

Detroit tax rates are at their current legal limits. Even if Detroit was legally able to raise taxes, its residents cannot afford to pay additional taxes.